Out of Mind
by more-than-words
Summary: “We could put both options to the test and then come up with a scoring system of some sorts to decide whether threats or promises are ultimately more seductive and alluringly convincing when presented with opportunities to dance, so to speak.” 10Rose.


**Disclaimer: **It belongs to the Beeb, who are the Masters of everything, including the Master himself. They're pretty cool. I'm hoping if I flatter them enough they'll give me Doctor Who as a present.

**Spoilers: **New Earth, Tooth and Claw, references to my story Out of Body.

**A/N:** This is a sequel to Out of Body. It's not vital to read that to understand this as neither of them have a plot to speak of, but I'd love it if you read it anyway! This is pure fluff, and I'm thinking of starting a petition to get the website to add 'fluff' to their category selection thing, because it's really needed. That said, enjoy the story!

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It was a few hours after they returned from being knighted by and then banished from the Empire by Queen Victoria that Rose finally got up the courage to say to the Doctor, "Y'know, Scottish suits you."

There was a moment of silence from where he was currently buried beneath the TARDIS console, as ever surrounded by masses of wires and electronics she could scarcely understand but swore could not possibly be broken despite the frequency with which the Doctor tinkered with them. Then he replied, "Oh, really?" in the deep Scottish brogue she had found so appealing only a little while earlier.

Rose laughed at his response, a small giggle turning into a full blown laughing fit as the Doctor stuck his head out from under the console and waggled his eyebrows at her. "Well, I'm glad you approve, Rose Tyler," he told her, faultless accent still intact. She shivered as the timbre of his voice ran through her and set all her nerve endings tingling. She wondered if he had any idea of the affect he had on her at moments like this, when he was covered in sweat and dirt and oil and doing a pretty decent impression of flirting with her. "You should see me in a kilt," he continued as though he had been reading her thoughts.

"You reckon?"

"Oh, I do," he insisted. "You wouldn't know what had hit you, Rose."

She could hear his smile as his face disappeared from view again and he fiddled with a stray wire. "I bet," she replied dryly.

"What, you don't believe me?"

"Seeing is believing," she told him.

"That's true," he agreed. "Then perhaps we should visit Hogmanay at some point, hmm? We can go all Scottish and eat haggis and drink whiskey whilst wearing tartan and dancing the Highland fling."

Oh, she thought, that one was just too good an opportunity to miss, although she would probably be less nervous about the direction of this conversation if she'd had a glass or two of the whiskey he'd just mentioned. "So, is that a confirmation that this body of yours _dances_?"

His startled laugh made her blush. She was glad she couldn't see his face so that he couldn't see how flushed she was currently looking. "Oh, I'm pretty confident that I dance," he replied airily. "Not sure about _dancing_ though. The opportunity hasn't presented itself yet."

She smiled at that; she loved these little moments when they were perfectly in tune with each other and their flirting escalated to levels that would be good enough to win a medal in the Universal Olympics of Sexual Tension… if there even was such a thing, of course. "You haven't had this body long. Give it some time," she said suggestively.

The Doctor's voice sounded somewhere between happily thrilled and somewhat startled as he queried, "Is that a promise, Rose?"

She smirked although he couldn't see her. "Or a threat. Which would you prefer?"

He pulled himself out from under the console and stood to lean against it, looking down on her where she sat curled up in the Captain's chair. His eyes raked over her body before finally raising to meet her expectant and curious gaze. "I wouldn't mind either way," he said in the same suggestive tone she had used earlier, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "We could put both options to the test and then come up with a scoring system of some sorts to decide whether threats or promises are ultimately more seductive and alluringly convincing when presented with opportunities to dance, so to speak."

They both grinned, and Rose mused at how easily she had come to accept the raised levels of flirting and innuendo that had come along with the Doctor's regeneration into what could only be described as a highly sexy body. He knew it, too, and delighted in winking at her whenever he caught her checking him out. She had to admit that as much as she had adored the old Doctor, this incarnation was definitely a lot more fun and game for a laugh. "Don't tempt me," she replied to his previous suggestion.

"Don't you tempt me either, Rose Tyler," he told her. "I'm still not one-hundred percent sure about what kind of man I am this time round; I'm not entirely sure how good my skills of resistance are, and I'm sure your mother would not be pleased if she knew I'd ended up ravishing you against the console because I couldn't take your teasing."

The mere mention of her mother stopped Rose's current train of thought stone dead. "Party pooper," she pouted.

"Hey, that's not fair!" he exclaimed, feigning hurt. "I'll have you know that I'm the life and soul of the party this time around!" His Scottish accent was back now. "But I have to make sure to protect your innocence and virtue, my wee lass."

"Then maybe you shouldn't have let Jack travel with us," Rose laughed, loving his playfulness and yet knowing that he was being sincere. He always did everything he could to protect her, she knew. She unfurled herself from the chair and stood up, smiling softly as she made her way over to the Doctor. When she reached his side, she took his arm and gave his bicep a squeeze before surprising them both by stretching up to press a kiss to his cheek. "Thanks Doctor," she said, not quite sure what she was thanking him for but knowing that he wouldn't ask her to explain. "Night," she said as she released his arm and gave him a smile before turning and heading from the console room.

"Night, Rose," came his soft reply as she walked away to her bedroom.

-8-8-8-

_Oh, does she have any idea…_ It was now half an hour after Rose had disappeared off to bed, and his mind was still stuck on their last conversation.

'_Is that a promise?' _he had asked her, and she had replied _'Or a threat.'_ Yep, he decided, she really was trying to kill him. Or, at the very least, she was trying to seduce him into a gibbering wreck of a Time Lord. It stressed him out to think of it, the last Lord of Time in the whole of time and space just living in wait for those sweet moments when he could flirt with Rose and the atmosphere between them would become heady enough for him to be able to kid himself that maybe- just maybe- she meant what she was saying when she suggested that she might offer him the opportunity to find out his body's talents at _dancing_. He thought he might explode from unresolved tension before he ever got to find out if she was joking or not. That, or Jackie would somehow find out that he had been thinking less-than-innocent things about her daughter, and she'd hunt him down across the universe and chuck him into a black hole.

The Doctor broke out of his reverie at the sound of a knock. That was when he realised he was no longer in the console room, and the knocking sound was actually the result of him rapping on Rose's bedroom door. He had no recollection of walking here, and no memory of deciding it would be a good idea to come here when his thoughts were still centred on the issue of somehow satisfying his libido. The TARDIS hummed around him, and he knew that his ship was laughing at his current state of ridiculousness.

"Come in," Rose's voice called from inside the room.

Before he could convince his brain that he shouldn't really be here, in the same place as Rose and her oh-so-tempting bed, his hand developed a consciousness of its own and raised itself to open the door.

He found Rose sitting up in bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets and reading a book of 78th Century fairytales from Angdotia that he had given her after she had become enraptured with the story-telling legends of that planet on a visit there not so long ago. She looked up and smiled when he came in and stood awkwardly just inside the doorway. "What's up, Doctor?" she asked, marking her place in the book with a tattered old paper bookmark. He made a mental note to give her proper leather one that wouldn't wear away so easily.

"I… Um, I…" he said uselessly, scratching the back of his neck. "Just thought I'd come and see if um… Ifyouwantedabedtimestory?" he garbled out before he could instruct his brain to think of a better reason for coming to her room unbidden.

She looked blank for a minute whilst she deciphered his rapid speech before understanding dawned. "You want to read me a bedtime story?" she checked.

"Yes," he said, for want of any face-saving ways to recover. He felt himself blush and was glad for the lack of lighting in the room, the only sources of light being Rose's bedside lamp and the glow of the TARDIS corridor, shining through where he'd left the door ajar.

Rose giggled. "Don't think I've had one of those since I was about ten."

"You've been missing out," he said, walking across the room to sit on the edge of her bed. He decided that he might as well play along with his own ridiculous excuse if it meant he could stay close to her for a little while longer. "In my experience you only start to appreciate such things properly when you're older."

"Then I expect to be dazzled," she informed him and held out her book, offering it to him.

He took the book from her and laid it down on the armchair by the bed. "I don't need that," he said. "Bedtime stories are always so much more fun when they're made up on the spur of the moment, don't you think?"

She shrugged. "I wouldn't know. Mum was never much into that sort of thing. She used to read to me instead."

"Well, now's your chance to find out." He smiled at her fondly, genuine affection for his young companion shining through.

"An original bedtime story as told by the last of the Time Lords," she said. "You'd better make yourself comfy, then." She patted the bed beside her and gestured to him to lean back against the pillows.

He hesitated for only a moment before taking off his tie and his jacket, then reaching down to unlace his shoes. He was reminded of the last time he had been in her room like this, after their adventure on New Earth. He smiled at the memory of putting Rose to bed, and felt a burst of desire shoot through him as he remembered how she had let him kiss her, just so he could have the opportunity to kiss her back. Deciding that now was not the time to get himself lost in fantasies about what might have happened that night, he settled for swinging his legs onto the bed and then sliding down to lean against the pile of pillows at the head of the bed. He reached out and coaxed Rose to lie down next to him before folding his arms behind his head as she turned onto her side to look up at him, waiting expectantly.

"Now, let's see," he said when they were both comfortable. "What kind of story would you like? A happy one, a sad one? Fairytale or horror story? A mystery or something magical?"

She shrugged, the duvet slipping down her shoulders slightly. He reached out and pulled it back up for her. "I don't mind," she said. "Whatever you want to tell me a story about is fine by me."

He nodded and thought for a moment. It had been an awfully long time since he had told anyone a bedtime story, and he was slightly worried he may have lost his touch. But then, he reasoned, Rose had never really had a proper bedtime story in the way he would define the act, and so maybe she would appreciate whatever he came up with. He decided to just play it by ear.

"Let me see…" he said. "Ooh, I know." He shifted on the bed, making himself comfortable against Rose's mound of pillows. "One Dark and Time-Stormy Night on board the TARDIS," he began, using his Scottish drawl to make her laugh. "The great Doctor's companion- feral child that she was- was sitting in the library getting her shoes all over the furniture and reading a mystery book about Mars in the 59th Century."

He dropped his Scottish accent now and switched to his usual London tones that he knew he had picked up off her when he regenerated. He smiled as he noticed Rose grinning and hanging on his every word as she lay beside him. "The great Doctor- who, by the way, was the most awesomely intelligent being in the whole of time and space," he continued, "was nowhere to be seen on this fateful night in the swirl of the Time Vortex. His erstwhile companion could usually find him tinkering away with the inner workings of their magical spaceship, but on this night she hadn't seen him in hours, content to sit and read her book. Because, you see, this companion- whose name was Rose- was really a lot more intelligent than she or anyone else thought, and she loved to learn about the alien worlds the wonderful Doctor took her to."

The Doctor slid down on the bed until he lay beside Rose, looking up at the ceiling as he continued with his impromptu story-telling session. "And so Rose didn't realise that the brilliant Doctor was actually in grave danger from the most evil of threats. He had been trying to fix the TARDIS teleporting device when he accidentally pressed the 'on' switch too soon and managed to transport a very evil creature inside the magnificent spaceship."

He paused for a minute whilst he thought about where to take the story, and was distracted by the feel of Rose's hand creeping out from beneath the duvet to grasp at his, twining their fingers together. He looked down at her, seeing a contented sleepy expression on her face. He decided that they should have story time more often if this was the result.

"Now, this creature was deadly. If it decided that it wanted to kill then there wasn't a thing in the universe to stop it. And the reason it was so horrendously deadly was because it seemed to be so nice. The creature was a metamorphic, empathic, murderous being that looked like Casanova with all the power of a King at his most powerful."

"So he looked human then?" Rose asked to clarify.

"Oh yes," the Doctor said. "He was even more handsome than Captain Jack, and twice as charming and one hundred times more corrupt. But not quite as handsome as the brilliant Doctor, mind you. His name was… Marcus, and he was the last of his species, known as the Mephistopheles Clan. He spent his days floating around the universe seducing the unexpecting and then killing them when they weren't looking. And he really, really wasn't happy that the brilliant Doctor had transported him into his ship. The Doctor recognised Marcus' species as soon as he saw the man, and he was instantly worried because he knew that if Marcus decided to kill him then he wouldn't be able to stop him, and then his companion Rose would be left alone with the evil man. And the Doctor didn't want that."

He smiled as he spoke the next part of his tale, his words holding a great deal of truth even though it was part of the story. "The Doctor would willingly die for his lovely companion if it came to it, but he never wanted it to be in vain. He would never willingly leave her alone in a dangerous situation if he could help it, because Rose was very special to him."

The Doctor's breath caught in his throat as he felt Rose's head settle against his shoulder, and one of her arms wrapped itself around his torso. He reciprocated with an arm wrapped firmly around her shoulders. She looked up at him, drinking in the story he was spinning for her. "So what happened?" she whispered.

"Well," the Doctor said, deciding not to read too much into the way his fingers were stroking themselves across the soft skin of Rose's shoulder without his permission, "Marcus was a very observant being, and he saw the worry in the Doctor's eyes as he realised just who this creature was. He told the Doctor that if he didn't transport him back to where he had been previously within ten seconds, then he would severely regret it. The Doctor told Marcus that he would take him home as soon as possible, but that he couldn't do it straight away because he'd put the TARDIS into a holding pattern whilst he worked on the teleport, and the reverse teleport was still offline. Marcus was really not happy, but he knew that if he killed the Doctor he'd be stuck forever. And so, under the watchful eye of the last of the Mephistopheles Clan, the brilliant Doctor set to work fixing the TARDIS.

"Meanwhile," he continued. "Rose was still reading in the library, not having a clue what was going on in the heart of the ship. But then," the Doctor whispered and paused for dramatic effect, "then, she heard a noise. A strange shuffling noise, creeping closer, and closer along the corridor." He walked his fingers up and down Rose's arm as he spoke, smiling to himself when she shivered in response. "Rose was used to strange sounds on the TARDIS, and she knew the Doctor was there to keep her safe so she didn't worry. She kept on reading her book." He slowly bought his head closer to hers, and then drew his mouth down to her ear.

"'Hello sweetheart,' said Marcus," he growled into her ear. Rose jumped and the Doctor grinned. "Rose was shocked," the Doctor told her. "She spun round at the sound of the voice in her ear, half expecting it to be the Doctor playing a trick on her. But there leaning over her was a man she had never seen before, a man with an evil glint in his eye. 'Who are you?' Rose asked him warily. 'Where's the Doctor?' Marcus laughed at her and told her that the Doctor was busy fixing the TARDIS to take him home, and that he had gotten bored whilst he was waiting."

"How did Marcus know the Doctor wasn't alone?" Rose asked, her heart beating rapidly against the Doctor's side as they lay entwined together in her bed.

The Doctor's eyes slipped shut. "Marcus had seen into the Doctor's soul," he explained. "He looked into his eyes and saw that he wasn't travelling alone. And so Marcus, being the nasty evil creature that he was, decided that he wasn't going to leave without having some fun and set off in search of the girl he knew was travelling with the Doctor."

-8-8-8-

Rose felt the beginnings of sleep start to wash over her as the Doctor continued with his little bedtime fairytale. She was lulled by the soothing sound of his voice, letting his words wash over her as he wrapped both his arms around her and starting twisting her hair between his fingers.

She laughed as the Doctor told her how the Doctor in his story suddenly realised he had been left alone in the console room, and almost tripped over his tool box as he ran in the direction of the library where he knew his companion was.

He told her how the great Doctor reached the library to find Marcus asking Rose to go with him when they reached his planet because he was annoyed at being stuck on the spaceship and wanted compensation. "The Doctor got out his sonic screwdriver," he went on, "and pointed it at Marcus's chest. But Marcus wasn't stupid. He pulled Rose up in front of him and used her as a shield to stop whatever the Doctor was planning to do." He smiled down at her as her eyes began to drift shut, her mind now heavy with sleep. "But Rose wasn't stupid either," he told her. "Like I said before, she was much cleverer than people thought, and that included Marcus. And so Marcus was very surprised when Rose began to chant an incantation."

"What incantation?" she prompted when the Doctor paused in his story to rest his cheek on her hair.

"The incantation that legend said was deadly to members of the Mephistopheles Clan," he replied. "You see, nobody really knew why the Clan had disappeared, but Rose had recently read a book that suggested it might have been because of the magic behind the words of the incantation. _Leave your mind, and your body,_ said the incantation. _Fall apart and break down, collapse into the void and sleep, lie with the Devil in his resting place._" He snapped his fingers. "And Marcus vanished."

"Mephistopheles was the devil in Faustus," Rose mumbled.

"That's right," the Doctor said. "And Marcus was much the same; he took people's souls. But the incantation rendered him useless and so he disappeared. The Doctor was shocked that Rose knew the incantation; after all, even he didn't know the precise wording of it and he was a genius. But the brilliant Doctor didn't know that whenever he was messing around with the wiring on his ship, Rose was reading books in the library and learning everything she could about the universe and that was how she knew how to recognise a member of the Mephistopheles Clan and how to get rid of them."

She looked up at him then, the twinkle in his eye telling her that he was in fact more than aware how much time she spent flicking through the books in the library when she wasn't with him. "Gotta do something with the time," she said.

"Well, exactly," he agreed. "But the Doctor was so pleased at how brilliant his companion was. He ran across the floor of the library and gave her the biggest hug he'd ever given anyone in his life." He squeezed her closer to him to make his point. "And he vowed never again to mess with bits of the TARDIS that didn't need it in case they had any more unsavoury visitors."

"Bet he didn't keep that vow."

"No," he agreed. "Probably not. The temptation to mess would have been too great, I'm sure. But I'm sure he left the teleport well alone after that."

"Then what happened?"

"Then… The great Doctor and his lovely Rose went off through the universe having brilliant adventures hand in hand, and loving every minute of it." He smiled softly. "They ran across the stars into eternity. The end."

Rose smiled sleepily. "That was a nice story," she said. "Despite the plot holes. Thank you."

He grinned back. "Well, these plot holes do happen," he said. "Especially when the story is made up on the spur of the moment. Makes it more fun though!"

"Oh yeah," she agreed. "Definitely."

-8-8-8-

The Doctor looked down at Rose as she drifted towards sleep in his arms. He had to admit that his bedtime storytelling skills weren't what they had once been, but it had seemed to have its desired effect. In more ways than one, perhaps. He could definitely get used to the feeling of Rose lying in his arms, he decided.

Noticing she was almost asleep, he lifted one hand to brush her hair back from her face, preparing to reluctantly shift her to lie properly in bed. Rolling them both to lie on their sides so he could slide his arms away, he gave into impulse one last time and leaned forwards to press a kiss to the soft skin of her forehead.

That was the exact moment that Rose tilted her head up to say good night.

He missed her forehead altogether, and instead found his mouth pressed firmly to hers in a kiss. Surprise prevented him from pulling back straight away, and only his mouth having a mind of its own- just like the rest of his body, it seemed- could possibly be blamed for him deepening the kiss almost immediately. He decided that he should check Rose's pheromone levels and the levels of aphrodisiac in the air to see if they could be blamed for the way his arms pulled her body closer to his, wanting to prolong this as long as possible.

He knew without a doubt that it was her little moan and the way her hands moved to his hair and tugged lightly at the strands that made him roll her over onto her back so he lay above her, and it was her leg rubbing against his that made him open his mouth and snake his tongue out to stroke hers carefully.

"Doctor," Rose gasped against his mouth as her hands slid down his sides to grasp his waist. He blamed that for the way certain parts of his body began to respond to hers.

"Rose," he groaned in response as he nipped at her lips with his teeth. "I'm supposed to be- oh!- saying… guh… goodnight."

He fused his mouth to hers again before she could reply, deciding that he might as well keep in with tonight's theme of logic going out of the window completely. He kissed her soundly and thoroughly, delighting in the way she kissed him back just as enthusiastically. He decided that now was not the time to wonder why that was, or to decipher the meanings behind their mutual passion, or to think of all the reasons why this was a bad idea. He decided that nothing that felt this good could possibly be a bad idea.

In the end, he blamed lack of oxygen for making him draw back from her mouth, her lips now swollen and bruised a lovely cherry pink by his kisses. He cursed the need to breathe, but at the same time praised it for stopping him from doing anything even more overtly rash than he had done already.

"That's getting to be a habit," Rose said huskily.

"Oh no," he said. "I think it has to happen more than twice for it to be a habit." He paused, and then smiled down at her where she still lay beneath him. "But I think it could get to be habit _forming_."

She smiled back at him. "I think so too," she said, slightly hesitantly.

"Wanna keep in with our habit-forming pattern?" he asked, gesturing towards the bed.

Her smile widened into a grin. "Go on then."

His eyes danced as he slipped beneath the covers with her, just as he had done the night after they had returned from New Earth. Rose turned the light out and then her hand sought out his in the darkness.

"Maybe bedtime stories are habit-forming too?" she suggested.

He smiled into the dark of the room. "Maybe."

"Night Doctor."

"Night Rose," he said, feeling her head settle against his shoulder once more as sleep overtook her for the night. He decided not to read too much into it that he was wide awake for the rest of the night, thoughts of her crowding his mind and filling his senses until he wondered how he had ever managed to pass his nights before he met her.

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**A/N: **_Rose smiled sleepily. "That was a nice story," she said. "Despite the plot holes. Thank you."_

_He grinned back. "Well, these plot holes do happen," he said. "Especially when the story is made up on the spur of the moment. Makes it more fun though!"_

Plot holes happen, but please review anyway! Please…? I think there might be another one of these stories coming soon… Jen xx


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